


Making Space

by writeitininkorinblood



Series: I'll Pray For You [6]
Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Adoption, Child Abuse, Description of Injuries, M/M, vague description of dead bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26138575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeitininkorinblood/pseuds/writeitininkorinblood
Summary: Gawain never thought he'd be the kind of man to settle down and have children. Squirrel was one thing, but by luck or by coincidence or by the will of the Hidden, life keeps bringing little ones to his and Lancelot's door.-Alternatively - four times that Gawain and Lancelot end up adopting kids.
Relationships: Gawain | The Green Knight/The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)
Series: I'll Pray For You [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870960
Comments: 15
Kudos: 168





	1. Tristan

**Author's Note:**

> It's not really fully explained but this first chapter takes place roughly five years after everything that happens in Cursed S1 and times are pretty peaceful. The Fey have set up new villages where they tend to live with those they made closest bonds with during their time as refugees (so not so much just living in clans anymore).

Gawain and Lancelot stood in silence as they looked at what was left of the village. The fires had mostly burned themselves out by the time they’d arrived, with only a few embers and smouldering piles of wreckage remaining. It was Red Paladin handiwork, no doubt. They didn’t even try to hide it – their usual crosses stood tall, bearing the charred remains of the village Elders, a crudely drawn Paladin cross flag even flew all-too-cheerfully in the breeze over what remained of the central hall.

Officially, the Paladins were illegal now. They’d finally been banished from the lands by royal decree and their church leaders had escaped back across the ocean, but pockets of festering evil remained and men still donned red robes and sought Fey blood in more unofficial capacities. For the most part they were easy to track down and snuff out before they could do more damage than burning a few fields or harassing a trade wagon or two. Clearly they were getting braver.

When the plume of smoke that signalled a distress beacon being lit, a system built from the ashes of the Paladin’s first reign of terror, had been sighted across the very tips of the trees, Gawain and Lancelot had been quick to volunteer to respond. They were skilled enough that they didn’t need a large group to accompany them and could move quicker through the trees as just a pair, and both yearned for a break, regardless of its nature, from the peaceful monotony of village life. Leaving Squirrel with Nimue, they had ridden fast and uninterrupted towards the beacon, hoping to be able to be of aid once they arrived. It was painfully clear they were too late.

Gawain reached for Lancelot’s hand, ducking his head to begin a prayer to the Hidden for the souls of the Fey who had passed on. For a long moment his murmured words were the only sound, before the wind changed and Lancelot quickly tightened his grip on his hand, as if in shock.

“There’s someone left,” he breathed, and then he was gone.

It was a small village, probably less than thirty huts, and it didn’t take long for Lancelot to track what he could sense. One of the smallest buildings on the very outskirts of the perimeter had someone inside, someone still alive. He kicked the charcoal that had once been the wooden door aside and stepped in, surprised to find no one. But he trusted himself and he knew that someone had to be hiding.

“I mean you no harm,” he promised the room at large. “The people who did this are gone.”

There was no reply. The small hut held few hiding places and it didn’t take long for Lancelot to have done a sweep of them all, finding nothing. Even when Gawain caught up, helping sweep the building, they didn’t locate a survivor. Frustrated, Lancelot closed his eyes to focus on what he could sense, trying to narrow down a more specific location. It was difficult with the smell of death and fire still thick in the air. When he found himself drawn to one particular corner, he thought for a moment he was losing his abilities. There was a person there, or at least there had been.

Hunched over a small basket was the burned remains of what seemed like a young woman. It was clear that she was no longer with the living, but Lancelet was sure that something in that basket still was and he turned to Gawain and quietly asked for help to carefully, as respectfully as they could, move the body away from the wicker basket. He couldn’t understand how it hadn’t burned, until he touched it and realised it was still damp. Someone, presumably the woman who had given her life to defend the contents, had doused the box in water to prevent it catching fire. Lifting the lid, Lancelot confirmed his suspicions that his abilities had not begun to fail him. Sleeping soundly in the box, unharmed by the chaos and death around him, was a Faun baby, antlers no more than tiny nubs on his forehead. He was three, maybe four months old, tucked inside a blanket and clutching a tiny knitted doll in his fingers.

“Is he alive,” Gawain asked quietly, hand on Lancelot’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Lancelot nodded. “Or else I wouldn’t have been able to find him.”

It was clear that they couldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t survive on his own and a burial ground was no place for a child. He wouldn’t be the only baby Lancelot had saved from a burning Fey village, but he was certainly the first in many years. Easing him out of the wicker box that had saved his life, Lancelot gathered him into his arms and tried desperately not to jostle him. The longer he slept the longer they didn’t have to worry about what to feed him or what to do with him now he was orphaned. When the doll fell from his hand, Gawain grabbed it before it could hit the soot-covered floor and put it in his pocket for when the boy woke up. He deserved at least one comforting thing to remember his family by.

They took the baby outside into the sunlight, where ash wasn’t still falling from the ceiling and the stench of burned flesh was less pronounced.

“I guess he’s coming back with us,” Gawain sighed. “Unless there’s someone else left?”  
“No one,” Lancelot confirmed.

“We don’t even know his name…” Gawain looked over the small boy, supressing how much it made his chest ache to see Lancelot hold a baby so gently. It wasn’t the time, nor the place, to feel broody. Besides, they already practically had a child in Squirrel. “Stay here with him for a moment. I’m going to search the house for anything that might be his.”

Lancelot nodded and offered up the weakest attempt at a smile, but it was all he could manage. He was overwhelmed with how close this small child had come to dying, how quickly the Paladins would have slaughtered him alongside his mother had they found her trying to hide him, how lucky he was that her plan had worked and that he’d been found before he starved to death. Gawain saw right through the attempt at positivity and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“I’ll be right back. You’re amazing, my love. Without you, he’d never have been found,” he whispered.

Gawain ducked back inside the hut and tried to be respectful as he carefully combed through the remains of the fire, conscious that the baby outside wouldn’t wait forever for him to do an entirely thorough job. He found what likely used to be clothes but were now largely ash, some charred blocks that seemed to have been toys for building small towers but would now never balance on top of one another as misshapen as they were. There was a metal necklace left among the burned remains of a table in the bedroom, which Gawain had to assume belong to the mother. He took it, taking a moment to kneel beside her body and offer her a prayer for her safe delivery to the Hidden, and a promise to look after her son. The boy would want something to remember her by when he grew up, and while a piece of jewellery wasn’t a memory, it would be better than nothing.

Gawain was about to leave when something caught his eye. A small piece of whittled bone, seemingly amorphous until he had it in his hand and realised that it was a carving of a small horse, with a figure astride that appeared to be a knight. The layer of ash that coated it was easily brushed aside to reveal the polished white underneath and Gawain was certain it belonged to the boy. Its legs were chipped like it had been well-played with, repeatedly bounced across the floor by clumsy hands. That went in his pocket with the necklace and the doll. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

When Gawain headed back out, he was surprised to find the child seemingly awake but still silent. Lancelot was bouncing him gently up and down and whispering in some soft language that Gawain had never even heard, each word like the warming crackle of an ember.

“Do you speak some kind of magic baby language I don’t know about?” he asked quietly, not wanting to be a disturbance.

Lancelot looked up quickly, startled at being overheard. His cheeks went pink.

“It’s Ash. It’s… calmer,” he admitted sheepishly.

The language of the Ash Folk. Logically of course it made sense that Lancelot spoke it, but in the five years Gawain had known him, he’d never heard a word of it.

“I’ve never heard you speak it before.”  
“There’s no one left to understand it if I did,” Lancelot sighed.

Gawain filed that knowledge away for a more convenient time. There was a conversation to be had there, but not one that couldn’t wait until they had reported back to Nimue that there was a particularly violent group of active Red Paladin copycats, and found the child something to eat and something clean to wear. 

They walked back through the village to the horses, with Lancelot keeping up his murmured Ash spiel to keep the boy calm. Gawain couldn’t understand a word of it, but every now and then he heard his name, and he wondered what was being saying about him. He found he rather liked hearing it nestled so softly between Lancelot’s native language, like it belonged.

Goliath and Gringolet had waited patiently where they’d been left, as they could always been trusted to do. As Gawain untied the reigns from the branch they’d been looped around, Lancelot turned back to look over the village one last time.

“We’re going to make them pay,” he promised, reverting to English as if the child would somehow be able to understand him. “They will burn as your kin burned. I won’t rest until their souls have been granted the revenge they deserve.”

Gawain stepped forward to rest a hand on Lancelot’s shoulder, warm and reassuring. He didn’t argue with the words – he’d just as readily see the men responsible for this new slaughter die, but it wasn’t their priority in that moment.

“For now, let’s get him safe,” he encouraged.

Gawain knew, on some level, that they weren’t giving the boy up. They could so easily hand him off to a Faun family in their village back home, or to one of the healers. He didn’t have to be their responsibility. They had Squirrel, after all, and they were kept surprisingly busy with Fey council affairs. But Gawain could see in Lancelot’s eyes the connection he’d already made with the boy, the promises they’d both made to keep him safe. They had found him for a reason, and if there wasn’t space in their life for him, they’d make some.


	2. Rowan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: injuries of child abuse  
> Set a year after chapter 1.

Lancelot and Gawain could still hear the festival through the trees, the village only a dozen paces away, but the quiet of the forest was still more privacy then they’d had in a long time. Neither of them resented the fact they’d somehow ended up with two children, but it did mean they rarely got a moment to themselves and since Squirrel was enjoying the festival with some friends and Tristan was at the small children’s area that had been set up and was being watched by at least five trusted adults, they were taking the opportunity.

Lancelot had tugged on Gawain’s hand, pulling him away from where people were dancing, weaving through the huts and between the trees with almost childlike giddiness. He’d stopped arbitrarily when he decided they were far away enough not to be disturbed, and had promptly pushed Gawain up against the nearest tree and proceeded to remind him what they used to get up to before they’d adopted a baby. His first goal was to kiss his lover senseless and he was willing to wholeheartedly commit to the task, pulling away from Gawain’s lips to kiss down his throat, revelling in the scratch of stubble against his cheeks until he found the smooth skin of his collarbone and bit down playfully.

Gawain could feel the bark of the tree digging into his back and he absently wondered if it was damaging the one good shirt he had to wear when there was an event in the village, but Lancelot’s mouth was proving itself a far more compelling topic to dwell on. His hand went to the man’s hair, curling possessively into the strands without pulling enough to hurt, while the other hand tucked fingers just under the waistband of Lancelot’s trousers at the small of his back in a tempting suggestion of where this could go.

“We’re too old for this,” he mumbled with a smile. Sneaking away to make out in the woods was a young person’s game, not that he wasn’t enjoying playing it.

“Speak for yourself, Green Knight,” Lancelot teased.

He returned to Gawain’s collarbone, determined to leave a mark that wouldn’t fade for days. They wouldn’t have broken apart voluntarily but they both had automatic self-preservation drives that ran deep and the second they heard a rustle in the trees, the desire to stay alive kicked in. It wouldn’t have worried Gawain so much if it had come from the direction of the village, but the noise had come from the outstretching darkness of the forest and he was pulling the knife from his boot and reflexively stepping in front of Lancelot before he had another conscious thought. More than used to having to override Gawain’s innate protectiveness, Lancelot just stepped to the side and readied himself, weapon-less but unyielding and fearless, for whatever was about to come through the trees. They fought side-by-side, regardless of the enemy.

Only when the trees finally parted and they were face to face with their assailant, he was a few feet shorter than they were expecting. Rather than an ambush from a sword-wielding human, a small tusk boy was peeking through the leaves. When he saw the knife in Gawain’s hand he seemed justifiably terrified, stumbling back and grabbing onto a branch to keep from tripping.

Gawain cursed, immediately putting the knife back in his boot and out of sight, holding up his hands to show that the weapon was gone.

“I’m sorry, you just surprised us,” he tried to explain gently.

The boy couldn’t be more than five or six and he looked thoroughly spooked, like he’d been expecting to find them even less than they’d been expecting someone to turn up.

“You shouldn’t be out this far, little one. Head back to the festivities,” Lancelot encouraged, really hoping he could continue with the evening he had planned.

Only Gawain shook his head. He’d been staring at the child, trying to place him as the son of one of the families in the village, but he couldn’t, and the boy’s clothes were barely more than dirty rags. There was no chance he’d come from the festival dressed like that.

“He’s not from here,” he mumbled, trying to keep the words just between him and Lancelot.  
“Are you sure?”  
“I know everyone,” Gawain promised, and he did.

Lancelot focused his attention on the forest around them – he’d been too distracted by Gawain to notice to the boy’s presence before, but it seemed like there were no more unknown Fey lurking out in the woods.  
“He’s alone,” Lancelot confirmed, before Gawain even had to ask the question.

That just confused things further. What was a child so young doing in the middle of the night, roaming the forest without an adult? Gawain knelt down on the floor so he could be eye level with the boy.  
“What’s your name?” he asked, trying to keep his concern out of his voice.  
“Rowan,” the child recited, eyes wide and, regrettably, still a little fearful.  
“Are you far from home?”

The boy just nodded, but seemingly with a hint of a smile. Like he was proud of himself for it. Gawain desperately hoped that they didn’t have a little runaway on their hands – if he didn’t want to tell them where he was from then they might never be able to reunite him with his parents and put their likely worried minds at ease.

“Do you remember how to get back there?” Gawain tried, hopeful. When he got a shake of the head in response, he went for a different tactic. “Are you with people? Travelling?”  
Another head shake. They seemed to be at an impasse. Gawain looked to Lancelot for help, unsure how best to assist a child who didn’t seem to want to be assisted. Lancelot wasn’t sure either, but the boy looked cold and hungry and those seemed like the first things to address. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the apple he’d smuggled away from the festival for Goliath, holding it out to the child.

“Here. It’s not much, but it’s food,” he explained, hoping they’d be able to find him something warmer and more filling if they could get him back to the village.

As soon as the boy saw the apple his eyes lit up and he took a step forward to reach for it, and it became immediately apparent that he was limping. Neither Gawain or Lancelot had noticed the boy’s feet up until then, but he wasn’t wearing shoes and seemed to have walked a long way without them. There were cuts all over the skin that they could see and the soles undoubtedly had to be worse if he’d been standing on thorns and branches. It only took a second for the two men to come to a silent agreement that this child needed help before they could return him to his family.

“Come on, we’ll take you to Pym. She’s very friendly, I promise, and she can make your feet feel better,” Gawain said, forcing a reassuring smile. “Do you want me to carry you?”

The little boy sized Gawain up for a long moment as he chewed hungrily on a bite of apple, but his eyes kept returning to the boot that he’d slipped the knife back into and clearly the weapon wasn’t lending itself to an aura of trustworthiness. Instead the child turned to Lancelot and held out his arms to be picked up, surprising them both.

Lancelot had carried Squirrel on occasion in the past, and held Tristan constantly, but it still seemed rare that a child that wasn’t his properly trusted him. It was easier with the younger children who didn’t remember him as the figure who had stalked their nightmares and had burned their families, but the Ash Folk markings still deterred many of them from seeing him as approachable. Still, he wasn’t the one with the knife and he had been the provider of food, and clearly that made him look like the better option.

Rowan was short and skinny and it was almost no effort at all for Lancelot to pick him up and settle him on his hip, where the boy quickly buried his face into the warmth of his shoulder. Gawain spared a look at the soles of his feet and it confirmed his fears – Pym was definitely the right person to help. She’d studied hard to be a healer once peace had come and was one of the most trusted women in the village when it came to the wellbeing of its residents. There was no one else Gawain would trust his family’s lives in the hands of more.

They split off once they reached the boundary of the village, with Lancelot heading straight for the healer’s hut with the child and Gawain hurrying back to the centre square to find Pym beside the campfire. One quick explanation of their situation had her immediately on her feet, practically running down the dirt trails between the huts until she skidded to a stop outside her workplace.

Lancelot had sat the child on one of the beds and had taken a seat himself on the next mattress across, sitting cross-legged and seemingly telling Rowan about Goliath, from the sounds of the last few sentences he got out before he trailed to a stop. Gawain just about recognised it as a version of the bedtime stories Lancelot would tell Tristan.

“Hi,” Pym waved at the child. “I’m Pym. I heard you might be having a little trouble with your feet. Can I take a look?”

Rowan seemed unsure for a moment, but Lancelot nodded encouragingly and the boy stuck out his legs so Pym could see his feet. She flinched at the state of them, immediately finding lacerations deep enough that he certainly shouldn’t be walking on them, and superficial scratches that crisscrossed over each other and still wouldn’t be fun for a child, or indeed an adult. They were all packed with dirt and bits of leaf from the forest floor and the first order of business was to clean them up so infection wouldn’t set in.

Pym was used to treating children’s cuts and scrapes, giving Rowan her usually spiel about how brave he was being and how she’d had adult men make more of a fuss over less, while she worked on washing and wrapping his feet. The child seemed comfortable with her and with Lancelot, but every now and then he’d give Gawain more of a worried glance, always keeping an eye on the boot he knew held a weapon. Lancelot saw his apprehension and frowned. There was certainly no reason to fear Gawain.

“You don’t have to be afraid of him. He isn’t scary. He’s a big softie, really. See, look,” Lancelot explained, prodding Gawain gently in the cheek a few times, much to his bemused chagrin. “He doesn’t even bite.”  
Had they not been trying to convince a child that no one was going to hurt him, he would have turned to nip at Lancelot’s finger to prove a point but as it was Gawain just bore the harassment with little more than a warning side-eye. It made Rowan giggle, if nothing else, and Gawain was pretty sure that was the first time the boy had smiled.

“So, not scary, not scary,” Lancelot summed up, pointing to himself and then to Gawain. Then he pointed at Pym. “Terrifying.”

Pym stuck her tongue out and Rowan’s giggle turned to a proper laugh. It sounded surprised, like he hadn’t laughed in a long time and Gawain’s heart felt like it was being crushed to imagine how a child could lose familiarity with their own laugh. He loved that Lancelot was the one to help bring it back, but he wondered what exactly they were stumbling into. The boy’s ragged clothing, his lack of footwear, his starved appetite. It didn’t seem good.

Sensing that the weapon was what was giving the child pause, Gawain reached into his boot to slowly pull it out, cautious not to make any sudden movements. It was a hunting knife, nothing more, but he could never bring himself to go completely unarmed even at a festival, even so many years after peace had finally come. He always needed to know he could defend those he loved.

“Here,” he said, setting the knife on the floor between the bed Rowan was on and the one where he’d settled beside Lancelot. “I would never have hurt you with it. I’m sorry I frightened you, I didn’t know who was out there.”

“He’s stupidly protective,” Pym added. “Particularly of Lancelot.”

“That’s me,” Lancelot explained quickly, because the child was going to get very confused very fast if he couldn’t keep up. “And she’s right, he is. Stupidly.”

He repeated the word with clear intent, poking Gawain in the ribs. Over all the years they’d been together, Lancelot had never once needed to be protected and that hadn’t stopped Gawain from trying every single time.

“All right, I think we’ve proved the point,” Gawain muttered, rolling his eyes and just about holding back a smile.

Rowan was still looking at the knife on the floor, biting at his lip. Eventually he looked up at Gawain, finally making eye-contact, and pushed up the sleeve of his shirt to his shoulder, revealing a mottled pattern of bruises, burns, and what were undeniably cuts made by a blade. It was obvious they’d all been done intentionally. Silence fell over the three adults in the hut as they took in the extent of the injuries and what exactly they meant.

“Okay sweetheart, I’m going to have to look at those too, okay?” Pym said finally, trying hard not to cry.

It took Pym almost an hour to check over all of the marks on Rowan’s body. It was one of the most difficult things she’d ever had to do and Lancelot and Gawain didn’t leave the hut once, both for her sake and for Rowan’s. They tried to get him to talk about where exactly he was from, who exactly they could make pay, but it was clear he didn’t want to discuss it and that seemed fair enough, at least for one night. 

Lancelot ended up pacing the length of the hut in frustration, desperate to do something to help the child but helpless as to what. His long strides seemed to be distressing Rowan further so Gawain quickly got up to still him and take his mind off of things best he could while Pym finished up with the last few injuries.

“It’s been quite a night, hadn’t it?” he muttered, keeping his voice low so the boy, and Pym, wouldn’t overhear. “I’m sorry we were interrupted earlier. We’ll ask Squirrel to babysit Tristan tomorrow. I’ll make it up to you.”

“What about the new kid?” Lancelot asked, gesturing back over his shoulder to Rowan.

Gawain smiled softly. He’d seen this coming, and he couldn’t say he hadn’t come to the same conclusion.

“So we’re keeping this one too?”  
“We can’t send him back. Those marks…” Lancelot shivered, hating to think of it.

There was no way they were letting Rowan go back to a place where he’d been so badly hurt, that was certain.  
“We’ll sort something out.”

Gawain leaned forward to kiss Lancelot gently, hand cupping his cheek. It was nothing more than a gentle reassurance that things were going to be okay, but when he pulled away he found Rowan staring at them, wide-eyed with disbelief. It seemed apparent that whatever waste of breath had raised him so poorly had also done little to widen his worldview when it came to relationships.

Pym whispered a couple of words to Rowan, shaking him out of his shock, and collected up the bandages and salves she’d been using to re-shelve them. When she’d tidied up, she joined the two men.

“Where did you find him?” she asked, keeping her voice low.  
“He found us,” Gawain shrugged. “We were…. taking a walk.”

Pym raised an eyebrow.

“Taking a walk? One of those famous night time walks where it’s dangerous out there and you can’t see anything, in the middle of the biggest festival of the year? Sure,” she snorted. “Let’s go with that.”

“Pym,” Lancelot warned, because she knew that their relationship was none of her business.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know,” She just waved him away. “So what are we doing with this kid? I think we can all agree he’s not going back to the assholes who hurt him, so are you two adding to your band of misfits?”

Gawain looked to Lancelot, who just nodded. They’d make room for him somewhere. He deserved a warm home and enough to eat and people who loved him and cared for him, and they could give him all that. Along with brothers to play with, once he could safely stand on his feet again.

“We should ask Squirrel,” Gawain decided, because the kid hadn’t gotten a say when they’d brought home Tristan and while he’d taken to having a sibling rather well that wasn’t to say they could keep doing it to him. And Tristan himself was probably a little young to understand.  
It was agreed that Rowan would be better off in Gawain and Lancelot’s home for the night than he would be in the healer’s hut – it would be more inviting and comfortable, and smell less of poultices and tonics. More than happy to have him if Squirrel agreed, Gawain left Lancelot to continue his story of Goliath’s adventures and set off in search of their oldest, unofficial, son.

Squirrel wasn’t awfully impressed to be interrupted while he was hanging out with his friends on the banks of the river, as most teenagers wouldn’t be, but he seemed to sense Gawain’s urgency and he tolerated being pulled away from the group and listened intently to the run-down of the evening’s developments.

“So he’s staying with us?” was the first question he asked, and he just snorted when he earned himself a surprise look. “Please, taking in strays is what you do.”

“If that’s okay with you?” Gawain checked.

“Of course,” Squirrel shrugged. “He needs us.”  
“You’re a good kid,” Gawain ruffled his hair with a rueful smile, wondering how much longer Squirrel would put up with that. “Don’t be home late, okay?”

He fully expected the teenager to return to his friends, but instead he just shook his head.  
“What are you talking about? I’m coming to meet my brother.”

Gawain couldn’t help but pull the boy in for a hug, ever proud of the man he was turning in to.


	3. Lenore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place a year after chapter 2.

Gawain couldn’t get over quite how quaintly domestic his day was shaping out to be. He’d kissed Lancelot goodbye that morning as the man had left for an all-day hunting trip, taking Squirrel with him, and now he had a napping toddler in a crib in one room and was sat at the table in another teaching an eight year old his letters on a slate with a piece of chalk. He hadn’t exactly anticipated this was how his life was going to turn out once the Fey no longer had such need for warriors, but he really didn’t hate it.

Rowan was an attentive student and was diligently tracing over every letter Gawain drew out, sat on his lap so he could study the construction of each one and follow the lines. Gawain was wiping off the slate between each letter but keeping himself amused with the words he was spelling out all the same. They were half-way through ‘Wolf Blood Witch’ when he heard movement outside the front door of the hut and he looked up quickly, hoping to be greeted with the ever-enjoyable sight of Lancelot returning home, hopefully with Squirrel still in tow and in one piece.

The natural reaction of most people to seeing one’s partner walk through the door was a tiny, unmistakeably baby-shaped bundle, was probably not to simply sigh but Gawain was not most people and really he’d given up being surprised by it at this point. So when it happened, he just nudged Rowan off his lap and climbed to his feet, accepting the quick hug he got from Squirrel as the teenager barrelled past to his room.

“She must have been abandoned in the woods and she was crying and hungry and-” Lancelot began to explain, seemingly particularly defensive before Gawain had even said a word.

But Gawain just interrupted him.

“What did you name this one?” he asked softly, because he knew Lancelot would have already given her a name.

“I thought Lenore? After...”

After Nimue’s mother. After the woman who had practically raised Gawain after his own parents had died when he was a child. They had never had a daughter and while Gawain hadn’t put much thought into what they’d name her if they did, this was perfect. He had to try not to cry as he crossed the room so he could kiss his lover and meet the little girl.

“You’ve really got to stop doing this, we’re running out of places to put them,” he laughed, because of course she was staying if she’d been abandoned and needed a family.

He was reaching out to hold the baby when he realised why Lancelot was being so strange – it wasn’t just that he was bringing home another child unannounced, or that he was anxious about his choice of name.

“She’s human,” Gawain froze.

Lancelot flinched, as if he had somehow been hoping that wouldn’t come up as a problem. Only he had decided to spend his life with a man who still mistrusted every human he met and would happily go the rest of his days interacting with them as little as possible.  
“Yes,” Lancelot admitted, holding her a little tighter like Gawain was going to take her away.

She had wanted so desperately to live. Lancelot hadn’t been able to sense her like he would if she’d be Fey but she’d been screaming so fiercely that her voice seemed hoarse, determined to be found. Whoever had left her clearly cared little whether she lived or died, tucking her under some foliage where she was largely sheltered from the elements but was still vulnerable to wild animals, starvation, and dehydration. She’d stopped crying as soon as Lancelot had picked her up, clearly satisfied her work was done and that she’d saved her own life, and she’d mostly been sleeping ever since, exhausted from her endeavours. The hunting party had cut their trip short to bring her back so she could be fed and Pym could look her over, which had been their first stop as soon as they’d reached the village. Pym had promised him she was healthy, but warned him Gawain wasn’t going to be happy. And she’d been right.

“Lancelot, she doesn’t belong here,” he said, crossing his arms and taking a step back.

“She didn’t have anywhere to go. She would have died if I’d left her,” Lancelot protested.

Gawain had to admit he didn’t begrudge the saving of her life. She was still a child, an innocent creature who deserved better than to be left to die, but they could not be the ones to give her a home.

“She needs to be looked after by own her kind,” he argued. It was what was best for her, and best for the village. Arthur pretty much filled up their quota of humans as it was. “Take her to the gates of a town. Any human town. They’ll look after her.”

That way she’d be safely handed over to someone else’s care. They wouldn’t need to lie in bed at night and worry if they’d done the right thing. But Lancelot looked entirely unconvinced, still holding the child close and protectively.  
“And if they don’t?” he challenged.

“I sort of wanted a sister,” Squirrel piped up, having returned to the centre of the hut and taken up one of the empty chairs at the table.

Lancelot had let him hold her for some of the ride back and he’d whispered stories to her about living with his two dads. How kind they were and how much more loved she was going to be with them than she’d been with whoever had left her to die in the woods. He was willing to fight her corner, make sure his words hadn’t been empty promises, but Gawain just turned to him and fixed him with a stern look.  
“Go to your room. And take Rowan with you.”

“But-”

“Go, Percival,” he ordered.

Squirrel sighed, knowing that the use of his real name meant there was no room for negotiation. He let Rowan scramble onto up onto his back like a monkey and picked up the slate from the table as he left so he’d at least have some way to keep his little brother amused. Lancelot wasn’t going to let the child go without a fight, that he knew, and he just hoped Gawain would come around.

As soon as Squirrel had closed his door, the discussion resumed. Lancelot had taken a seat, because even the smallest babies got heavy after a while. He didn’t want to put her down but it was easier if he could lessen her weight by resting his arms on the table.

“What about Morgana and Arthur? They were allowed to stay,” he tried.

On at least some level, Gawain knew that not all humans were evil, but he was also as stubborn as a mule and had unfortunately been proven right in his mistrust more often than was currently helping Lancelot’s cause.  
“What about Iris? So was she and look at the damage she did,” Gawain countered, hands on hips.  
“Guinevere?” Lancelot attempted, because she’d always made good on her agreement to work with the Fey.  
“Uther. Cumber. Carden,” Gawain ticked the names off on his fingers. “Every single one of those men who ever put on Red Paladin robes. For every Man-Blood who might have helped us, there are a hundred more who would gladly see us dead.”

It was difficult to argue with that when it was true. Lancelot had spent many years in the company of humans who thought all Fey needed to be burned from the earth, simply by virtue of their species. But the little one in his arms was no Red Paladin.  
“And that’s her fault?” he challenged, gesturing down at the child in the hope that Gawain would at least look at her and see the innocence of her face. But he stared unwaveringly into Lancelot’s eyes.

“She isn’t our responsibility.”

“What if they put her in an orphanage? What if no one ever loves her?” Lancelot pushed, because he knew how that felt.

He knew the child would be cared for with them, was certain that even Gawain would come around and help raise her well. If they threw her back out into the world then what was the chance of getting the same luck again? They had no guarantee she’d find compassion elsewhere, and perhaps without it she would become another of the kind of human Gawain feared so much.

Gawain knew his partner had rivers of compassion in him that ran too deep for his own good, and clearly he needed a new tactic to show him the folly of his actions.

“She doesn’t fit in here. She’d be the only one of her kind,” he tried.  
“Like me.” Lancelot said simply.

That hit Gawain in the chest, sharp and painful.

“I… No, you know you belong here. It’s different,” he protested, but he knew the more he spoke the more he was going to dig himself a hole. He just sighed and dragged a hand across his face. “It’s getting late. She can stay for the night but tomorrow you need to take her somewhere else.”

Lancelot obviously wasn’t happy about it, but Gawain made it clear the conversation was over. Their evening was far less comfortable than usual. There was dinner and bedtime stories for the younger ones and the regular arguments about what could be considered a sensible bedtime for an eight year old, but the two men didn’t speak much to each other. The human girl was borrowing Tristan’s crib for the night, which meant their youngest son was sleeping in the middle of their bed and Lancelot seemed glad for the barrier he formed between them. While he’d usually sleep curled up with his head on Gawain’s chest, focusing on the heart he was always grateful was still beating, he instead had rolled away to face the opposite wall, radiating his vexation.

As Lancelot lay there, trying to chase sleep, he formulated a plan. He’d by no means given up on the child and if Gawain was just as resistant to the idea of keeping her after time to clear his head and gain a fresh perspective come morning, he would take her to Nimue and see if there was any way of her being adopted by someone else in the village. Because he did agree with Gawain on one thing – humans could be cruel. He didn’t want the girl learning that so soon before she had to.

When Gawain was woken by a crying baby in the middle of the night, he got up on autopilot. He pressed a kiss to a similarly-stirring Lancelot’s forehead to assure him he could go back to sleep, and ignored his own tiredness as he climbed out of bed and lifted the child from the crib, stepping out of the room in an attempt to let his partner go back to sleep.

It was only when he looked down that he realised this wasn’t Tristan, that it had been a long time since his youngest son has been so small. Instead there was a tiny, angelic waif of a thing staring back at him, with the blondest hair he’d ever seen and the biggest blue eyes. She’d stopped crying as soon as she was picked up, but he automatically bounced her gently up and down like he would have done to soothe her and she seemed to smile at him for his efforts. There was a twinge in his chest and he realised that Lancelot may just have been right. Perhaps this was her place. She was looking at him with such open trust that he could not bring himself to even willingly let her down.

Gawain looked around their modest little home with a sigh. If Lancelot didn’t stop trying to rescue all the orphaned children in the lands, they were going to need to look into an extension. Still, little Lenore was small and seemed rather calm, so that was at least something. Only he discovered quickly that she was only quiet on her own terms once he snuck back in to the bedroom to try and lay her back down to sleep and her cries started again as soon as she wasn’t being held.  
Gawain cursed, quickly gathering her up again. Lancelot had left so early that morning that he deserved to get a good night’s sleep, without being kept awake by cries that he was beginning to suspect were for attention more than anything else. It took three more failed attempts at comforting her and trying to put her down before Gawain gave up and climbed back into bed, settling the child on his chest where she seemed content to finally drift back off to sleep herself, and allow him to do the same.

When the sunlight of the next morning roused Lancelot, he didn’t expect to find quite so many people in his bed. Tristan was still there, as he’d been when they’d all fallen asleep, but clearly Rowan had thought he was missing out and had climbed in at some point in the night, making space where there was none and curling up protectively around his brother. Gawain’s presence was ever-favourable but this time it made the breath catch in Lancelot’s throat, because the very child he’d refused to accept the night before was sleeping soundly on his chest, clearly entirely at home. Lancelot couldn’t help but reach out and gently stroke over her hair, before rousing Gawain with a soft tug on one of his wayward locks.

“Good morning,” he smiled, before gesturing to the baby with a smirk. “I thought she couldn’t stay?”

“Shut up,” Gawain groaned, hand over his face. It was too early for this.

“She sure looks like she belongs here,” Lancelot laughed, careful not to wake the two sleeping boys. He should have known all it would take to win Gawain over was the child herself. His husband always had had a weak spot for determined kids who wouldn’t leave him alone.

“You’re so lucky there is a baby sleeping on me right now” Gawain threatened, but it was evident he was joking. He reached for Lancelot’s hand – the most he could do since he was weighed down by Lenore – and squeezed tight. “I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly serious.  
“I know,” Lancelot nodded, squeezing back before leaning over to kiss him gently. “So she’s staying?”  
“She can stay,” Gawain confirmed.

Before either of them could say anything else, they heard a cheer through the door. Gawain just rolled his eyes.

“What have we told you about eavesdropping?” Lancelot sighed, entirely unsurprised when Squirrel ignored the content of the words entirely but still took them as an invitation to come in and somehow find a spare inch of the bed not already occupied by someone else.

It certainly was nothing like the life Lancelot had anticipated, and Father Carden would surely be turning in his grave to see it, but a warm home surrounded by the man he loved and the children they were raising together seemed far more than he’d ever earned. He settled back against the pillows to watch as Squirrel woke Rowan by tickling his feet and happily waited for the chaos to unfold.


	4. Nella

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place three years after chapter 3.

There was nowhere Lancelot preferred to be more than curled up against Gawain’s side in bed, blissfully ignorant that a new day was starting around them until a small child came to jump on them or Fey council business came knocking. Gawain was warm and smelled like cedar and olive oil and Lancelot could have stayed there forever. Only his peace and quiet was shattered by the familiar cry of a baby, shrill and demanding. Lancelot was sat up, sighing and scrubbing the sleep from his eyes before something dawned on him.

“Is that one of ours?” he asked Gawain, who was only just waking up and was focusing on burying his face against the soft skin of his hip.

Their kids were too old to cry like that.

“No,” Gawain yawned. “Ours don’t do that anymore. They just scream when they’re mad. Or hungry. Or tired. Or bored.”

Lancelot snorted. Squirrel was far past temper tantrums, twenty years old and often found helping them calm the younger kids rather than starting trouble himself. Rowan was eleven and more likely to pout than yell. Five-year-old Tristan would be the most likely to start a screaming fit, and there was every chance he’d set three-year-old Lenore off when he did, but none of them were crying babies anymore. Only the neighbours didn’t have infants either, and the crying was loud enough that it seemed like it was coming from right outside.

Pressing a kiss to Gawain’s lips to silence his protests, Lancelot pulled himself out of their bed and threw on the nearest set of clothes, which weren’t actually his but Gawain was probably more likely to be appreciative than complain, and headed out in search of the source of the noise.

When he made it out into the main living area of their little thatched hut he found Percival already awake, looking far too anxious for the crack of dawn.

“You hear it too, I’m not going mad?” Lancelot asked, and Squirrel just nodded, biting at his thumbnail and gesturing towards the front door.

Despite the fact he could certainly hear the crying baby, it still shocked Lancelot to open the door and find one on the doorstep. It was wrapped tightly in a faded pink blanket and it didn’t seem happy about its current predicament. Instinct kicked in immediately and Lancelot was picking up the baby before he could even begin down the mental road of where she’d come from. He bounced her up and down in his arms, checking she wasn’t too cold and that she wasn’t crying in pain. It wasn’t long before he quietened her cries to hiccups with soft, murmured words, but he had no idea how much time had passed since she’d been left out there. She was probably hungry, maybe needed changing, and they didn’t have any of the things they’d need to look after a new-born anymore. When Gawain appeared, hair a complete mess and eyes still heavy with sleep, Lancelot was relieved.

“How do you keep doing this?” Gawain asked, barely even surprised by the sight of Lancelot rocking an unknown child anymore. “You’re like some kind of magnet.”

He kissed Lancelot’s cheek from behind, ignoring the whine of protest it earned them from Squirrel, and leaned over his shoulder to look down at the baby in his lover’s arms.

“Where did she come from? No one in this village has been pregnant,” he mused. “Have we somehow made a reputation for ourselves that goes beyond the village?”

“She was left on our doorstep,” Lancelot shrugged. “I have to presume that was intentional.”

“She’ll be hungry. If there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that you can’t reason with a hungry baby. Hand her over,” Gawain said, taking the baby and carefully supporting her head. “Come on, Little Miss. We’re going to go and see what Aunt Pym has for you to eat in the healer’s hut,” he cooed to the child.

“So we’re keeping this one, too?” Lancelot asked with a soft smile. As if there was any other answer.

“Don’t you ask me that like you’d ever vote to turn her away,” Gawain laughed. “We always seem to find room for another one somewhere.”

Lancelot kissed Gawain fondly before turning his attention back to the baby.

“We should at least try to find her parents?” he suggested.  
“I don’t think they want her. Not if they left her on a doorstep like that,” Gawain reasoned, and it was a good point.

They had no way of knowing where she came from. Looking at her, she seemed to be at least part Faun - there were two tiny stubs of antlers on her forehead, and her cheeks were already dappled with vitiligo. But she didn’t smell Faun, not entirely. It was only when Gawain had already set off that Lancelot realised what it was. She was half Faun, half Sky Folk, but it was more than that. She smelled familiar. Too familiar.

When Lancelot looked up to find Squirrel attempting to creep back to his bedroom, he put everything together and grabbed the boy by the arm, sitting him down in one of the chairs and standing in front of him before Squirrel even knew what had happened.

“Where’s her mother and is she okay?” Lancelot asked bluntly, crossing his arms.

If it wasn’t obvious in the way Squirrel squirmed awkwardly in his seat, the flash of fear in his eyes gave him away. He never had been good at lying. Lancelot wasn’t even sure why he was bothering, and yet he persisted.

“What are you talking about?” he tried, putting far too much effort into attempting to look casual and instead coming off stiff and uncomfortable.   
“You can stop trying to lie. She smells like you,” Lancelot explained gently.

“She what..?” Squirrel whispered, like he hadn’t even considered that she might have some tangible relation to him if she was, as Lancelot was certain, his daughter.

It seemed to strike him somewhere in the chest and broke down whatever façade he’d been trying to keep up. His eyes went to the door he knew the baby was somewhere on the other side of and his hands clenched, like he wanted to hold her.

“I met her mother at the market, we… hung out a few times,” he admitted, carefully choosing his words considering his audience was one of the men who had practically raised him for the second half of his life.

Lancelot wasn’t stupid and he could see right through the shaded lexicon, but he had no interest in shaming Squirrel for living the perfectly normal life of a twenty-year-old man. That wasn’t his intention.  
“She’s not from this village?” Lancelot quizzed, satisfied by the nod he got in response. But he wasn’t done. “And she’s of age?”

“Yes!” Squirrel spluttered. “Who do you think I am?! She’s my age. She just doesn’t want a kid and I don’t know the first thing about any of this but you guys do and I just thought… I’m sorry.” He hung his head, ashamed. “I figured she’d be better off with you as parents than me.”

Squirrel looked so small, like he was every bit the ten year old he’d been when Lancelot had first met him. And Lancelot understood why – the boy had to feel completely out of his depth. Dealing with something like that alone wasn’t the kind of thing someone that age should have to do.

“You know you did a stupid thing?” He sighed, because that had to be established.  
“Yeah,” Squirrel nodded. It had been all he’d been thinking about since he’d found out.

Lancelot put his hand on Squirrel’s shoulder, focusing his attention on the present where he didn’t have to deal with things alone anymore.  
“But you also need to know that we’re not going to judge you for it, or punish you. You can be honest with us when you’re in trouble. How long have you known about this?”

Squirrel seemed like he’d relaxed a little, and he found it easier to start talking more.  
“Only a few months. She wasn’t going to tell me at all, was just going to abandon the baby when it was born but I saw her again in the market and she was pregnant and I’m not stupid so I… I couldn’t let her abandon my child like that,” he mumbled, punctuating his words with a shrug.

Lancelot pulled Squirrel into a half-hug, ruffling his hair like he’d done so often when he was younger.

“You’re a good kid,” he acknowledged, proud that there was a protective instinct in Squirrel.

It was something he was pretty sure had been adopted from Gawain, who still sought to protect any and every one he could even with the war long over.  
“Not a kid anymore,” Squirrel protested, struggling out of Lancelot’s grip but half-heartedly at best.  
“No, you’re not,” he agreed with a smile. “While I’m sure Gawain will have something to say about it, I’m certain he will agree that we’re hardly going to kick you or your daughter-”

“Nella,” Squirrel interrupted him. “I… If I get the option I wanted to call her Nella. After my mother.”

Lancelot’s heart ached a little. He knew the Red Paladins had killed Squirrel’s mother, all those years ago. It wasn’t something that often came up but his past was still a festering wound in his memories, regardless of how well wrapped it was by years of attempting redemption. It was never going to completely heal, not for either of them, but Lancelot had another chance to do right by Squirrel’s bloodline and he wasn’t going to make the wrong choice this time.

“We’re not going to kick you or Nella out. Of course we’ll help, and of course she can stay here. But you need to step up and own your mistakes. Be her father; she deserves more than lies. If you’re all she has in the world then you have to be everything she needs. But you don’t have to do it alone,” he promised.

Too many children had grown up without parents because of what he’d done, if Nella had one who wanted her and loved her then she deserved to know.

There were tears in Squirrel’s eyes as his threw his arms around Lancelot’s neck, just like he’d done when he was a child, and held on tight. He might have a child of his own now but that didn’t stop him from needing his dads every now and then, because that was what they’d become.

“Are you going to tell Gawain about this?” Squirrel asked as he pulled away and tried to collect himself.

“No,” Lancelot said. “But you are.”

Squirrel pulled a face, hating the idea of how that conversation was going to go. He almost wished Lancelot would be the one to pass on the news so he didn’t have to see the look on Gawain’s face while he admitted that he had gotten a girl pregnant so young, and out of wedlock. Respecting women had been one of the first rules Gawain had ever instilled in him and he really hoped he wasn’t going to have disappointed him.

“I want to see Nella,” Squirrel admitted. The last time he’d held his daughter had felt like a goodbye and he wanted to overwrite that memory. “And then I’ll tell him.”

“I’ll be there when you do, if you’d prefer,” Lancelot offered, and Squirrel nodded.

He wasn’t alone in this. He had the best family he could ask for. It was all going to be okay.


End file.
